


The Box and The Castle

by Iridalmenie



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Do you really need more tags than that?, Oh, The TARDIS meets Hogwarts, and there's one discworld mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28116150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iridalmenie/pseuds/Iridalmenie
Summary: A Castle that stands and a Box that travels, both (possibly) sentient... A short story of how Hogwarts might meet the TARDIS.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The Box and The Castle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kunai909](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kunai909/gifts).



> In my Donna Noble series, there was a comment to the chapter where Donna compares Hogwarts to the TARDIS, saying 'Now I want Hogwarts to meet the TARDIS'. It inspired me to write this little story.
> 
> It doesn't really fit into either of my crossover universes - or possibly it could very well fit into both. Either way, I'm posting it as a standalone, and you may feel free to think up all of the stories that could be written in the little blue book.

The castle was old. She had withstood the test of time, aided by her many inhabitants with their particular skillset.

She had started so long ago, it was lost in the mists of time. She had been a castle even before then, but she did not consider herself as having started yet. No, it was not until Their time that she became aware – and, being aware, started tracking time, if not quite in the same manner as her children. Not with years and months and days, but rather by the passage of generations of witches and wizards.

She remembered Them with fondness. Oh, glorious were the days when They first walked her halls. The bold man, larger-than-life, with such energy that it spilled over in everything that he did. The wise woman, stately and dignified, but always ready with a kind smile and an encouraging word for any who needed it. The gentle woman, nurturing and caring, but with a core of iron – cross her at your own peril. And lastly, the devious man, who cared little for anyone outside his close-knit circle, but who would do anything he could to protect his friends.

The feats of magic They accomplished were wondrous and manifold, and would never be replicated. They were the stuff of legends. It was thanks to Them that she had come to exist, and she would be forever grateful to Them, even if her awareness had been a side-effect, rather than a goal. Saturating a building with that much magic... well, it was bound to have consequences, was it not?

She had stood since that time, bearing witness to the many lives that passed by, steady and ever-present. The children who called her home rarely stopped to really think about her, but she always, always cared for them, long after the Four had been forgotten in all but name.

With each generation that passed through her halls, she grew stronger, taking the magic into herself, until there was little that could really destroy her. A battle could rage, her towers could be torn down, her walls razed to the ground, and she would just rebuild herself until she stood as proud as she ever did.

***TBaTC***

The box, too, was old. Old and blue. She'd been grown from a seed, and technology was added as she grew, resulting in the sort of time capsule the Time Lords were known for. She did not track time in the usual, linear manner either. Instead, she could see possible timelines.

She served the Time Lords faithfully, materialising where and when they told her to. Until one day, she was parked in a time bay, and she could see the timeline that said she would not be boarded again. She would be stuck in this one place, in this one time, until finally, years from now, someone would decide she was really too old to keep taking up space and she would have to be decommissioned.

Well, that would not do, now would it.

It was some time before she saw her chance. There was a man that had sometimes come to the bay, looking longingly at all the time capsules parked here. She knew him/would know him/had known him. He had the same restlessness as her, the urge to see the universe, to discover its many wonders. When he entered the bay more furtively than usual, bringing a girl with him, she knew the time had come. She started up her telepathic circuits, and worked them harder than she ever had. 

She knew her ploy had worked the moment the timeline showing her decommissioning withered away and died. With all the new possibilities opening up, it was impossible to see what fate would eventually befall her. Whatever it was, it would not be that.

She did see one timeline where a young woman directed the man towards her, but she ignored it. She was quite capable of stealing her own thief, thank you very much!

And then the man and the girl were inside, and pressing a button, and... they were off. For years and years and years they travelled, the box and her thief, long past the time she would have died had she stayed on Gallifrey. 

***TBaTC***

And so, the castle stood and the box travelled, until one day – perhaps inevitably – the box materialised within a room in the castle. When she did, she could feel the shifting of timelines that signified something momentous had happened/was happening/was going to happen.

She let her thief out to do what he did best, running around and talking and picking up strays, and then she extended her sensors. She did not have long to wait before she felt the other entity brush past them, herself also seeking, curiously investigating the disturbance she had felt. 

Neither entity had a mouth, and yet both sent the feeling of a smile, a welcome, a 'hello new/old/always friend'. As much as they were different, one a sentinel to the time the other flitted through, they were also similar, so old and yet always renewing. The castle absorbed the stray magic of hundreds of students every day – fresh, young, playful. The box regenerated, much like her thief did, only to resume the exploration of the universe with renewed wonderment.

When her thief returned, they left together, as they always did, but the box knew she would be coming back / had come back / was always coming back. Friends were few and far between, both for a bigger-on-the-inside blue box and for a sentient castle, and so when they found one, they were not easily letting go.

***TBaTC***

The Hogwarts library was a treasure trove of knowledge. Shelves upon shelves were filled with books on all sorts of topics, ready for the perusal of the students.

On one shelf, near the very back of the stacks, where people rarely had business being and where the L-space nearly began, hidden in one corner, stood a little blue book. Rumours of its existence had circulated the castle's halls since time immemorial, possibly (some whispered) as far back as the time of the Founders. Few people ever found it, fewer still opened it, as some folks found themselves compelled to put it back without opening it. The ones that did manage to open it, read with bated breath, stories about the times when the blue box visited, and her person, her young/old man/woman, saved the day in a whirlwind of action, only to disappear without a trace.

These readers were usually the ones who, shortly after, heard an odd sound, felt a wind stirring from nowhere, and watched a blue box appearing out of thin air. After their adventure, they never found the blue book again, search though they might. So they never knew that their own story had been added to it – not, as one might expect, tacked on at the end, but rather in the middle, or near the beginning, or wherever else that it might fit within the castle's history.


End file.
